gate, his aunt, long a supporter of this Society, has lately died at the great age of 101 years, the last survivor of a long-lived generation of her family. The Committee has passed a Resolution expressing a keen sense of the loss which it has sustained and deep sympathy with Mrs. Alexander and her family. New Member of Committee. MISS S. MARGERY FRY has been elected a member of the Society's Committee. We welcome Miss Fry not only for her own sake, but as a member of wellknown families, such as those of Fry and Hodgkin, who have long been closely associated with anti-slavery work. Reviews. DURING the past few months biographies have been published of three public men who were associated closely with our Society and worked earnestly for the interests of the coloured and backward races. These books are all of great interest and we commend them to the notice of our readers. SIR CHARLES DILKE. The recently published Life of Sir Charles Dilke1 takes a foremost place among political biographies of the time. It deals with many of the momentous political events of the last thirty years, with which Sir Charles Dilke was intimately associated and did much to influence, and it sets before us the public life of a man of immense knowledge, of exceptionally close acquaintance with European politics, of rare experience, ripe judgment, and keen and sustained enthusiasm for the public service. Those who know anything of Sir Charles' work for native races and of his deep sympathy in everything that concerned the interests of the backward peoples of the world will be glad to find a chapter of the Life devoted to this branch of his work in Parliament and elsewhere in which the authors state that it won for him perhaps more public and private affection and regard than any other of his eager activities. The root of it is well expressed in a striking quotation from General Seely, who wrote as follows of the purpose. to which Dilke was devoting his unique talents, his untiring industry, and his striking personality : 'It was only after many years that the present writer found the master-key to Dilke's actions, and it was revealed in a flash at the time of the passing of the South Africa Union Act. The question was the representation of the native population in the Union and the cognate questions of their treatment and status. Dilke came to see me. He pleaded the native cause with earnestness, with eloquence, with passion. The man was transfigured as the emotions of pity and love of justice swept over him. . . 1 John Murray. And so I came to see that the mainspring of all his actions was the intense desire to help those who could not help themselves-to defend the underdog." Another Member of Parliament, Mr. J. W. Hills, who, though sitting on the opposite Benches to Sir Charles, worked with him for social reforms, speaks of Dilke's interest in Labour questions and his championship of the coloured races as springing from the same source-his sense of justice and sympathy with the unfortunate, and also from his clear logical recognition of the fact that servile conditions abroad or at home are the negations of that democracy in which he believed for the United Kingdom and the Empire. The authors trace Dilke's correspondence with the Aborigines Protection Society back to 1870, and in the later years of his life he was in constant and close touch with it, ever ready to afford his invaluable help to its officers, who knew that they would have his practical sympathy whether in cases of actual slavery or oppression, or of that industrial servitude which often presents greater peril than undisguised slave dealing. As he truly wrote to Mr. Fox Bourne in September, 1895, "The fashion of the day sets so strongly towards veiled slavery that there is nothing now to be done. by deputation to Ministers; we ought to appeal to the conscience of the Electorate." Thus Sir Charles was gravely concerned at surrenders of territory and jurisdiction to commercial associations, and for that reason opposed the establishment of a Chartered Company in North Borneo (where subsequent events have shown that his fears were not ill-founded), and the methods of the Chartered Niger Company. The stand which he took for the proper treatment of coloured labourers on the Rand, and in opposing the introduction of Chinese coolies, is within recent memory. Still more, the courageous fight which he led against the Colour bar clauses which defaced the treaty of Union with South Africa only a year or two before his death. Many members of the Society will remember his incisive speech at a Breakfast given by the Society to Mr. W. P. Schreiner and the delegates from the native and coloured races of South Africa in July, 1909. Sir Charles Dilke's vigorous work in the cause of Congo Reform is well set forth. His close acquaintance with problems of foreign policy gave him a unique opportunity for dealing with 'this subject effectively, as did also the fact that he had been a member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet at the time of the Berlin Treaty-the importance of which was strangely little understood at the time-and in favour of a treaty with Portugal for the Congo mouth, which it will be remembered was strenuously opposed by those (including the Anti-Slavery Society) who believed in King Leopold's great philanthropic intentions. (Dilke himself, also, it appears, was for a time deceived by that plausible monarch's promises, as he speaks of his disappointment when the King failed to keep them.) Sir Charles acted as a champion of Congo Reform in Parliament through the long struggle, raising the question again and again, and using language, we are told, "of a vehemence that startled in one so moderate." He did not live to see the end of the campaign, but his tact enabled him to carry through the main burden of this difficult Parliamentary task with such judgment and success as made it one, in the authors' words, "typical of his life-work." There can be no doubt that at the time of the Berlin Conference in 1884, when the European "scramble for Africa" was beginning, even leading statesmen little appreciated or understood the great issues involved. Dilke's knowledge of our Colonies as well as his insight into foreign politics enabled him to realize what others were ignorant of. Lord Granville, for instance, we are told, when invited to a Conference at Berlin, was much relieved on finding, as he put it, that it was only about the Congo." Yet this, as Dilke's diary adds, with irony, was "the famous Africa Conference which eventually settled the whole future of the Dark Continent." Sir Charles saw that Germany was taking up a policy of colonization which threatened dangers, and when she claimed a protectorate over Angra Pequena and seized territory in New Guinea and the Pacific, he was disgusted with the tendency of our Foreign and Colonial Offices to accept and lie down under " German aggression. Mr. Gladstone was opposed to a policy of annexations and, as we are told in a pregnant paragraph, " 'could not bring himself to understand that the great States of Europe had, almost without premeditation, moved into a field of policy which involved the apportionment of regions scarcely yet known in any detail to the geographers; nor did he realize the far-reaching consequences of the acquisition or refusal of some of these districts. The question of the Congo, for example, involved, as Sir Robert Morier had foreseen, the settlement of the whole West African coast." As Dilke fought for the retention of the New Guinea Coast and Zanzibar in 1884-5, so in 1887 he saw the danger of and protested against the cession of Heligoland to Germany by Lord Salisbury, remarking on that statesman's "strange dimness of vision when Africa is concerned." Dilke was no enemy to Germany, but his experiences in the Franco-German War taught him a lesson which he never forgot, and “the German peril," we are told, was in consequence ever in his mind. In this and in his conviction that Great Britain could not rightly assume a'policy of isolation, Dilke was ahead of his time. "A Europe without England," he wrote in 1878, "is as incomplete and as badly balanced and as heavily weighted against freedom as that which I, two years ago, denounced to you-a Europe without France." In 1901, in an article in the Figaro, he strongly urged cordiality of relations between England and France, and he welcomed the improvement in the situation created by the personality and influence of King Edward VII when he came to the throne. Such convictions as those referred to here and in other parts of the work gave Dilke a power of prevision which in the light of the great events of the World War, appears not a little remarkable. Yet, though a convinced Imperialist, Dilke had no sympathy with "the vast, if rather confused, ideas of general annexation which prevailed in Conservative circles," and declared in Parliament in 1898 his utter repudiation of "the policy of grab which is commonly associated with the name of Jingo." "I submit," he continues, that the worst policy in these matters is to have regard to our own rights only, and not to the rights of others. We want our country to be viewed with that respect which men will ever cherish for unbending integrity of purpose." One of the last letters, written two days before his death, was to the office of our Society noting an engagement which he hoped, if well enough, to fulfil a final letter characteristic of his devotion to the cause of the backward peoples, for whom his ungrudging service was ever ready-whether to attend to some petty detail of the Society's business, or to advise and assist in framing or carrying our wide questions of policy. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THOMAS HODGKIN. BY LOUISE CREIGHTON.1 This Life and Letters of Thomas Hodgkin is one of the most interesting contributions to the literature upon members of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, with which the first Dr. Hodgkin and his family have been connected from its foundation in 1837. Sir George Newman says: "Dr. Hodgkin's chief contribution to the Society of Friends was himself," but it may equally be claimed that Thomas Hodgkin's chief contribution to the whole human race was himself. It is impossible for any man or woman to read this admirable and soul-stirring biography by Mrs. Creighton without being lifted to a plane of nobler living and devotion to humanity, for Thomas Hodgkin spared not himself that perchance others might be blessed. In early years Dr. Hodgkin was much influenced by the life of his uncle, after whom he was named-Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, one of the founders of the Aborigines Protection Society. The attachment of Thomas Hodgkin the younger to "Uncle Doctor" figures largely in Mrs. Creighton's book, and it is known that only the visit to Australia and certain other commitments prevented his writing of a life of "Uncle Doctor." Again and again there are references in these letters to the example set by this kindly and noble-minded uncle. Writing to his sister Elizabeth, he says: 1 Longmans. "I think I have in me a little of dear' Uncle Doctor's' spirit which is made miserable by hearing of injustice, even though it does not touch my own pocket, and long to remedy it." Dr. Hodgkin could never hear of an injustice without endeavouring to find a remedy, but he always approached any question with a judicial mind and yet a mind so bent on securing justice that his efforts were never restricted nor his determination affected by legal subtleties and technicalities. THOS, HODGKIN ON HIS GOLDEN WEDDING DAY, The Life and Letters faithfully depict to us what we knew him to bea great lover of his fellowmen, sympathetic towards the human weaknesses of others, whilst sternly regulating his own conduct, a sage counsellor, but above all things a real and practical helper. Thomas Hodgkin, with that clearsighted vision which characterized his outlook upon public life, was haunted with the possibility of the very catastrophe which happily he did not live to see. So early as 1907 he wrote: "I am much grieved to see the bellicose attitude still maintained by Germany. Apparently every German statesman thinks that he must keep |